Five Sure-fire Steps To Lose Your B2B Leads

We all want to get new customers, or probably try to keep the ones we already have. This is pretty much natural for any of us in business. The cost we spend on attracting qualified B2B leads is not insignificant. Yes, you might say that this part is the easiest, but a lot of you tend to forget the other half of lead generation: keeping them to your business. And there are many ways for you to do it wrong. So, if you are curious as to what are the sure-fire ways to turn your customers away are, then here you go:

1. Failure to deliver - after gaining the trust and confidence of business prospects gained from your appointment setting campaign, the last thing you would want to do is to lose it. Unfortunately, this is a common fault in all marketers. Remember, you got that deal because you said you could wow your customers. Let down that expectation, and you are sure to end up in a tight spot.

2. Waste their time - be it in waiting for the delivery of the product or in resolving issues encountered, wasting the time of your customers is just like saying that you are not the right company for them. When that happens, not only will they bolt from you, they will also destroy your reputation through word of mouth. And given how fast information spreads on the Internet these days, that is a very real threat.

3. Create problems out of nothing - it is bad enough already to deal with the problems of your customers. Just imagine how worst it can be when you start creating problems out of thin air. It happened to me before, when I wanted to cancel my membership to a video rental store. The clerk said that I should return a DVD I rented before, but it has been done so, days ago. Turns out, the other clerk (the one not on duty that day) failed to record the returned item, complicating things for both the store and me.

4. Ignoring feedback - there is a reason you should love feedback: customers are giving you help. Even if it is a negative one, customer feedback is a treasure trove of business information that you can use to improve your offering. Who knows, you might get the next blockbuster sales leads idea out from what you learn from them.

5. Hamstring your workers - be it corporate policy or business practice you promote, what you tell your employees do will translate to how well they serve their customers. You should provide some leeway or flexibility in your front-line staff. In this way, they can do their work better, as well as putting themselves in the position where they can better generate B2B leads.

Also, the choice of communication tool to use when conducting lead generation campaign plays an important role as well. For example, telemarketing is a very aggressive form of marketing, while social media may be too subtle for comfort. Perhaps mixing and matching different marketing tools can help in your work.